Strange initramfs Busybox console behavior -Fresh Install 11.04 AMD64

[subru77]

Hello,

I did a fresh 11.04 install on my Dell 1501 AMD64. Installation went fine.

But the following craziness happens every time I boot my machine.

1) At first, on selecting Ubuntu from the Grub Menu , machine hangs with the Grub background.

2) I force shut down at this point. ( pressing the power button)

3) Second boot does not hang, but gets to the Busybox initramfs command prompt.

4) If I wait 5 min and then type "exit" it boots into Ubuntu and the computer functions fine until the next boot.

I do not know how to explain this better :(

Please help and many thanks in advance !

[Eljay1959]

I have the same problem (but in 32 bit).
Have you noticed on the first boot attempt that GRUB has a countdown before it blanks out to its background and the 2nd attempt (which works) has no countdown? I have no idea what is causing that but it is odd.
In any case it's extremely annoying.
I originally thought it might be a problem with having with having Windows dual boot previously set up but I have now done a completely re-partitioned disk, fresh, Ubuntu only installation and have the same result.
Anyone with any info ??? please :)

[Linuxneophyte]

I am having the same challenge on my son's HP DV9819 with dual core AMD Turion X2 and 4GB of RAM. Ubuntu 11.04 is installed as a second OS on the system. It also, will boot if I wait just a couple minutes and type exit. Any suggestions?

[jtmoree]

Did you ever figure this out? It seems to me that any system update that creates a new initrd image for the boot process does not work and renders the system unbootable.

I have had to re-install many times to figure this out. My current workaround is once the system gets screwed I boot with the backed up version of the initrd copy the original (/boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic) over the new one. System boots fine after that. I'm looking for bug reports but most boot issues for 11.04 are grub related.

I do have a raid partition that I'm using. This may have to do with this bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/natty/+source/mdadm/+bug/778520

My array is not degraded as in the bug but could still be affected.